Site Mobile Navigation

Spying on College Life, via Yik Yak

I’m a recovering helicopter parent with an only child who is now in college. The transition for her has been wonderful, almost seamless. For me, not so much.

I’ve tried to show some self-restraint. I tapered off my obsessive checking of her phone-tracking app after the first week or so. I resisted the urge to call or text her first. I curtailed my gratuitous offering of advice on everything from laundry to class selection. I let her go.

And I was pretty miserable as a result. I missed having her at home, but there was also a less noble reason — after 18 years of knowing who her friends were, befriending her friends’ parents, getting to know her teachers and school and curriculum, and knowing a good bit about the rest of her life as well, I was out of the loop. As any involved parent will tell you, that is a painful place to be.

Then I discovered Yik Yak. Now I feel better.

I know I’m not supposed to. Yik Yak is a free app that lets anonymous users write on a scrolling feed that is geofenced, allowing only people within a limited range (say, a college campus) to post. Any time social media is blended with anonymity, trouble and ugliness are inevitable. And so it is with Yik Yak. At barely a year old the app has not only become popular on college campuses, but has also been roundly condemned by many parents, educators and others. Some campuses have moved to ban it. Eric Stoller, writing in Inside Higher Ed, called it “a drug-fueled rave filled with miscreants.” “Fairly disgusting,” he concluded.

It can be. It’s aimed at a college audience, and it’s written mostly by college students, so there is a lot of talk about sex, drugs and unpleasant bodily functions. But if you skip the nasty posts (which can be “downvoted” and consequently dropped from the site pretty quickly), it can also be amusing — there are a lot of young Jimmy Fallons and Amy Poehlers out there — and very informative.

Photo

A snapshot of the Duke Yik Yak feed.Credit

Yik Yak has a feature called “Peek” that allows anybody to take a look at what college students across the country and elsewhere are thinking and talking about. If you happen to have a kid at one of those colleges, you can get some insight into what is going on there, the good and the bad. That’s why I peek. It’s like an unofficial newsfeed from a college, targeting just that campus. It’s not what you see on Facebook and Twitter, and it is definitely not the view you get at Parents and Family Weekend.

If you had looked on the University of Virginia’s yak scroll recently, for example, you would have seen the debate about sexual assault and the news media played out in real time among some of the people most affected by it. Same thing if you had happened to be looking at Florida State University’s Yik Yak during the campus shooting there in November. You would have found fear, and also offers of comfort and support among students on a traumatized campus.

But most of the time, it’s just the musings and commentary of college students who seem to relish the sense of community, even if they are anonymous. They talk about the campus buses and the dining hall food, they announce pizza specials or give tips when the line at Starbucks is short, or when they got a free side of guacamole at Chipotle.

A few consistent themes emerge after just a few days peeking at Yik Yak, no matter what campus you tune in to: Students complain (a lot) about the lack of sleep, the lack of money, poor quality toilet paper on campus, inconsiderate roommates and the weather.

And they may not tell their parents, but they really miss a lot about home, including, in this order of popularity: their dogs, home cooking, their own beds, their cats, mom and dad.

Photo

A snapshot of the Yik Yak feed from the University of Florida.Credit

Also, Netflix is bae, and Bill Nye is a true American hero.

College rivalries are a constant as well: “Forgot to shower, accidentally got a degree in Hippie Studies from Brown,” read a Yak from Cornell University in September.

Relationship issues, loneliness and other personal, yet anonymous details, are another popular theme such a this post from the Davidson College-area Yik Yak in December: “Nothing more ironic than hiding your gay pride flag in your closet so your parents don’t see it when they come to pick you up.”

As a parent, I find some value in those shared experiences and the glimpse into the lives of some of my daughter’s classmates, no matter how banal or, occasionally, how disquieting they may be.

A group of Colgate University professors recently flooded their college’s Yik Yak with positive messages to counteract cyberbullying — and students liked it. The professors said they probably won’t continue to “yak.” But I bet that, like me, they will continue to peek.

About

We're all living the family dynamic, as parents, as children, as siblings, uncles and aunts. At Motherlode, lead writer and editor KJ Dell’Antonia invites contributors and commenters to explore how our families affect our lives, and how the news affects our families—and all families. Join us to talk about education, child care, mealtime, sports, technology, the work-family balance and much more